The original car textures of Trigger Rally contain non-free trademarks. This gives the cars a realistic look and feel, but could cause legal problems. Therefore qubodub created new textures without such brands. Unfortunately this way his well designed textures look less realistic.
Liviu proposed to use free software projects as brands. Of course we want to check this with the projects we want to promote, before we go for it, but let's collect some suggestions first!
Based on what I use for creating new maps I want to point to:
I would find it disturbing to have real software logos in ads because:
1. Even in open source software, logo rights are sometimes complicated. For example: Blender.[1]
2. It makes no sense for software, especially open source software, to pay for being featured on racing cars.
I would rather suggest having fake advertisement. The textures made by me contain a lot of software package and command names but their design has no relation to their actual visual branding (if they have any at all). In the end it would have been just an insider joke for those who know what the commands/apps are. Might be funny, might ruin immersion (see my second point above).
We could look at http://www.wrc.com/en/wrc/teams/page/18-94---.html and let the brands inspire us to create fake brands that are advertised on TR's cars. I would prefer non-parody brands or only very subtle parody. I consider TR a simple but serious/realistic-themed (even if the physics are silly) simulation game.
Keeping or replacing with other software names is fine too but I would then prefer pretending that they are names of brands of oil companies and energy drinks by not connecting them to the actual software packages visually.
"I would rather suggest having fake advertisement."
I strongly disagree. But as I said before, I won't fight over this and if no middle-ground consensus can be found, we may as well revert r88 and proceed to a release from there.
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From my point of view there ist no harm in using real software product logos (without demanding any compensation for that) if the project leaders are happy with it. (And we should be able to check that.) I see this as a good opportunity to give those projects an additional stage - if they are not embaressed to be present in our ancient zombie-like project.
I suggested projects which helped making Trigger Rally possible since this seems logical to me. I guess Jasmine could name very important additional projects related to programing like gcc.
The Blender logo might be complicated, but since Blender is in the official Debian repositories, it can't be as bad as the Firefox logo for example.
My only real concern is proprietary stuff I would not want to promote and which could cause legal problems.
In order of my preference:
real free software project logos
qubodubs proposals (without the year on the number plates)
original textures
new proprietary brands
But even for the option I would like least I wouldn't endanger a new release by vetoing it.
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"From my point of view there ist no harm in using real software product logos (without demanding any compensation for that) if the project leaders are happy with it. (And we should be able to check that.)"
Personally I don't feel we need to ask anyone for permission. As long as the artwork is GPL'ed or similar, we're good to go. But feel free to do so once/if we come up with a suitable list of projects.
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Ok, if we decide to go for real projects, I will do my best to get any feedback from the project teams. But first we should clear how we will make the decision. Is there any established procedure in Trigger Rally for such decisions yet?
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I already posted a list in my first entry. You're welcome to add items to it. Should we make a deadline for collecting proposals?
On the other hand I have the impression you and qubodub are reaching some kind of agreement on the fake brand discussion. I don't know what you both prefer, but I posted my preference list on the question what kind of (real or fake) brands i would like to have in the game already.
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Some of those are integral components of Trigger, while others are software that I use when working on Trigger. One outlier is LyX; it has nothing to do with Trigger, but it's an excellent project and I'd love to see it on our cars.
From our two lists one overlap is Geany and gedit. We may choose one of those two (even though I must admit I always found Geany superior to gedit), or we may keep both of them and put each on separate cars. A bit of competition can't hurt!
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I wouldn't go for the proprietary or legally complicated options. Otherwise your suggestions are fine for me as well.
If we do not stick to what we explicitly use for creating Trigger Rally we might end up with too many unrelated options without any clear guiding possibility on what to choose. If we go for needed software we can prefer projects more important for creating the game. Additionally I think it's a great way to promote just the tools we used. This way it's actually kind of a showcase...
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Agreed. Let's start with a list of projects that are (even tenuously) related to developing Trigger, and later we can see if we want/need to include less relevant projects. Personally I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have irrelevant projects, but let's leave this for another day.
For the projects that we've highlighted, could you compile a list of (1) project license, (2) link to logo, (3) logo and name legal status (trademark, etc.)? Then we could proceed to modifying the textures..
Last edit: landroni 2014-07-27
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I don't think this is a very good way of using our limited ressources. I think we should first find out what we want to use. I'm not keen on doing a lot of research for nothing. I would even avoid doing this work and just ask the responsible people if they would be fine with us using their logos and names in the game. They should know if this is ok for them.
Only as the last step I would actually adapt the textures since this would be a waste of time as well if the project people don't like the idea of being present in our game. (I know you don't feel it would be necessary to get confirmation from them. Legally you might be right, but I still think it's the much nicer way to talk to people who have a stake in this beforehand.)
Since we have only three cars we need to decide if we place more than one ad on each. Racing cars seem to have different spots for different ads normally. We could do three different types of projects: programming, graphics and environment/used general purpose tools. Either on each car a different type or on each car a representation of all three types...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-07-28
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Should we just go for projects absolutely necessary for Trigger Rally? Shall we just pick projects you could not avoid if you want to play or create the game because it depens on it?
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I think the list is good. The cars are big and we will need to have sufficient projects to fill all the space up. If we realize that we have too many candidates, we'll simply avoid including some of them (those most remote from Trigger itself).
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Ok, I finally did find an svg for emelFM2. But since on the main web page an other image is used to represent the project I'm not sure if the folder icon you linked, is the best choice for our purpose.
I have asked someone from PhysFS if they have a logo and if they would be fine with being on our car textures.
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In the last weeks I had a lot to do and no chance to follow up on the textures. I actually don't mind any version as long as we can get it done in time for Debian - if it's not to late already.
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As I mentioned previously, doing a release with the old textures/ads/names is a breeze and can be done very quickly, assuming there is anything resembling agreement. Doing a release with the experimental textures/ads/names currently by default in SVN is a no-go for me. Coming up with new textures/ads/names takes time and will depend on our involvement. Sofar we didn't move very much on the names front, and with the current rates I don't think we can have anything by the end of the year.
If we revert to the stable textures/ads/names (the only sane thing to do IMO, until we agree to agree on any changes), then we can do a release swiftly. This however shall not guarantee acceptance in Debian, and will depend on (1) us making their freeze deadline and (2) the Debian maintainer moving swiftly.
Last edit: landroni 2014-10-19
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For me the only concern is getting a new release done. This could shed some light on the project and signals it is not dead yet - maybe we can even attract a new programmer ...
So right now we would just need Ivans ok since he is the only person left who did mention an opinion on this.
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I believe that whoever is able to create a win/debian release should do
whatever keeps him or her motivated to contribute. I'm with Onsemeliot that
a new release is most important.
Sorry, I won't be able to help by (re-)adding non-free content.
If the decision maker sees an option that uses free content only, I'd be
glad to work on that tomorrow and the day after.
Last edit: qubodup 2014-10-22
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OK, it's settled then: a new release it is. Over the weekend I will look into tweaking the defaults to point to the stable textures. We will also need to add the remaining of Onsmeliot's tracks. After the release we can resume the discussion on new textures/ads/names.
@Onsmeliot: Could you please check SVN and come up with a list of tracks that you made but have NOT yet been included?
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@Ivan:
Sorry to read about the fact that your principles get hurt right now. I share your perspective about keeping everything as free as possible, but I guess I'm less consistent than you in this case. I hope you will be available in the future when we find a solution with free textures and names.
@Liviu:
Sorry, I didn't get into how to work with the SVN yet. Can't you just overwrite everything with the most recent versions? The following links contain everything I contributed so far. (If you want to reduce the amount of work I suggest you just use the three zip files with the collected works in each category:
Textures
Without the new sprites many maps wouldn't work properly. Please ensure to add them correctly as well! (6 sky textures and 6 plant variations)
As discussed in "New version for Debian Jessie release?" I hereby open the discussion for ads on cars.
The original car textures of Trigger Rally contain non-free trademarks. This gives the cars a realistic look and feel, but could cause legal problems. Therefore qubodub created new textures without such brands. Unfortunately this way his well designed textures look less realistic.
Liviu proposed to use free software projects as brands. Of course we want to check this with the projects we want to promote, before we go for it, but let's collect some suggestions first!
Based on what I use for creating new maps I want to point to:
After we have decided on what projects we want to use I can offer to adapt qubodub's car textures.
I'm not sure if we should use more than one project per car. This way we probably could do a more exiting design fitting to each project...
My 2 cents:
I would find it disturbing to have real software logos in ads because:
1. Even in open source software, logo rights are sometimes complicated. For example: Blender.[1]
2. It makes no sense for software, especially open source software, to pay for being featured on racing cars.
I would rather suggest having fake advertisement. The textures made by me contain a lot of software package and command names but their design has no relation to their actual visual branding (if they have any at all). In the end it would have been just an insider joke for those who know what the commands/apps are. Might be funny, might ruin immersion (see my second point above).
We could look at http://www.wrc.com/en/wrc/teams/page/18-94---.html and let the brands inspire us to create fake brands that are advertised on TR's cars. I would prefer non-parody brands or only very subtle parody. I consider TR a simple but serious/realistic-themed (even if the physics are silly) simulation game.
Keeping or replacing with other software names is fine too but I would then prefer pretending that they are names of brands of oil companies and energy drinks by not connecting them to the actual software packages visually.
[1] http://www.blender.org/about/logo/
Last edit: qubodup 2014-07-24
"I would rather suggest having fake advertisement."
I strongly disagree. But as I said before, I won't fight over this and if no middle-ground consensus can be found, we may as well revert r88 and proceed to a release from there.
From my point of view there ist no harm in using real software product logos (without demanding any compensation for that) if the project leaders are happy with it. (And we should be able to check that.) I see this as a good opportunity to give those projects an additional stage - if they are not embaressed to be present in our ancient zombie-like project.
I suggested projects which helped making Trigger Rally possible since this seems logical to me. I guess Jasmine could name very important additional projects related to programing like gcc.
The Blender logo might be complicated, but since Blender is in the official Debian repositories, it can't be as bad as the Firefox logo for example.
My only real concern is proprietary stuff I would not want to promote and which could cause legal problems.
In order of my preference:
But even for the option I would like least I wouldn't endanger a new release by vetoing it.
"From my point of view there ist no harm in using real software product logos (without demanding any compensation for that) if the project leaders are happy with it. (And we should be able to check that.)"
Personally I don't feel we need to ask anyone for permission. As long as the artwork is GPL'ed or similar, we're good to go. But feel free to do so once/if we come up with a suitable list of projects.
I think asking would benefit good relations and possibly get us allies.
Sure, but I wouldn't make it a prerequisite for either including the artwork (as long as it's free, as in beer) or performing a release.
Ok, if we decide to go for real projects, I will do my best to get any feedback from the project teams. But first we should clear how we will make the decision. Is there any established procedure in Trigger Rally for such decisions yet?
"Is there any established procedure in Trigger Rally for such decisions yet?"
Nah. It's as ad hoc as it gets. Let's come up with a list of projects, and see if there are reservations to any individual candidates.
I already posted a list in my first entry. You're welcome to add items to it. Should we make a deadline for collecting proposals?
On the other hand I have the impression you and qubodub are reaching some kind of agreement on the fake brand discussion. I don't know what you both prefer, but I posted my preference list on the question what kind of (real or fake) brands i would like to have in the game already.
"Should we make a deadline for collecting proposals?"
I'd rather not. Let us naturally get to a point where we have a list of includeable projects and proceed from there.
So here's my list of proposals:
FSF
OpenAL (although it would seem that lately it's become proprietary)
OpenGL (although there may be issues with legalese)
Jam
PhysFS
Geany
emelFM2
Xfce
LyX
Some of those are integral components of Trigger, while others are software that I use when working on Trigger. One outlier is LyX; it has nothing to do with Trigger, but it's an excellent project and I'd love to see it on our cars.
From our two lists one overlap is Geany and gedit. We may choose one of those two (even though I must admit I always found Geany superior to gedit), or we may keep both of them and put each on separate cars. A bit of competition can't hurt!
I wouldn't go for the proprietary or legally complicated options. Otherwise your suggestions are fine for me as well.
If we do not stick to what we explicitly use for creating Trigger Rally we might end up with too many unrelated options without any clear guiding possibility on what to choose. If we go for needed software we can prefer projects more important for creating the game. Additionally I think it's a great way to promote just the tools we used. This way it's actually kind of a showcase...
Agreed. Let's start with a list of projects that are (even tenuously) related to developing Trigger, and later we can see if we want/need to include less relevant projects. Personally I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have irrelevant projects, but let's leave this for another day.
For the projects that we've highlighted, could you compile a list of (1) project license, (2) link to logo, (3) logo and name legal status (trademark, etc.)? Then we could proceed to modifying the textures..
Last edit: landroni 2014-07-27
I don't think this is a very good way of using our limited ressources. I think we should first find out what we want to use. I'm not keen on doing a lot of research for nothing. I would even avoid doing this work and just ask the responsible people if they would be fine with us using their logos and names in the game. They should know if this is ok for them.
Only as the last step I would actually adapt the textures since this would be a waste of time as well if the project people don't like the idea of being present in our game. (I know you don't feel it would be necessary to get confirmation from them. Legally you might be right, but I still think it's the much nicer way to talk to people who have a stake in this beforehand.)
Since we have only three cars we need to decide if we place more than one ad on each. Racing cars seem to have different spots for different ads normally. We could do three different types of projects: programming, graphics and environment/used general purpose tools. Either on each car a different type or on each car a representation of all three types...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-07-28
This seems to be our list so far:
How do we narrow it down?
Should we just go for projects absolutely necessary for Trigger Rally? Shall we just pick projects you could not avoid if you want to play or create the game because it depens on it?
I think the list is good. The cars are big and we will need to have sufficient projects to fill all the space up. If we realize that we have too many candidates, we'll simply avoid including some of them (those most remote from Trigger itself).
For following projects I couldn't even find any artwork to represent it:
For all the others I could find svg files - at least from the logos. Most of the time without any name written on it.
For emelFM2 (GPL):
http://svn.emelfm2.net/trunk/icons/emelfm2_48.png
But I'm sure I can find an SVG if I looked attentively. Would that help?
I can't find any icon related to Jam (unsurprisingly), nor for PhysFS. We could always ask them on their ML, though.
"Most of the time without any name written on it."
I think that's fine. We want to use the icon next to the project name in our textures.
Ok, I finally did find an svg for emelFM2. But since on the main web page an other image is used to represent the project I'm not sure if the folder icon you linked, is the best choice for our purpose.
I have asked someone from PhysFS if they have a logo and if they would be fine with being on our car textures.
In the last weeks I had a lot to do and no chance to follow up on the textures. I actually don't mind any version as long as we can get it done in time for Debian - if it's not to late already.
As I mentioned previously, doing a release with the old textures/ads/names is a breeze and can be done very quickly, assuming there is anything resembling agreement. Doing a release with the experimental textures/ads/names currently by default in SVN is a no-go for me. Coming up with new textures/ads/names takes time and will depend on our involvement. Sofar we didn't move very much on the names front, and with the current rates I don't think we can have anything by the end of the year.
If we revert to the stable textures/ads/names (the only sane thing to do IMO, until we agree to agree on any changes), then we can do a release swiftly. This however shall not guarantee acceptance in Debian, and will depend on (1) us making their freeze deadline and (2) the Debian maintainer moving swiftly.
Last edit: landroni 2014-10-19
For me the only concern is getting a new release done. This could shed some light on the project and signals it is not dead yet - maybe we can even attract a new programmer ...
So right now we would just need Ivans ok since he is the only person left who did mention an opinion on this.
Hey,
Sorry for being so slow to respond.
I believe that whoever is able to create a win/debian release should do
whatever keeps him or her motivated to contribute. I'm with Onsemeliot that
a new release is most important.
Sorry, I won't be able to help by (re-)adding non-free content.
If the decision maker sees an option that uses free content only, I'd be
glad to work on that tomorrow and the day after.
Last edit: qubodup 2014-10-22
OK, it's settled then: a new release it is. Over the weekend I will look into tweaking the defaults to point to the stable textures. We will also need to add the remaining of Onsmeliot's tracks. After the release we can resume the discussion on new textures/ads/names.
@Onsmeliot: Could you please check SVN and come up with a list of tracks that you made but have NOT yet been included?
@Ivan:
Sorry to read about the fact that your principles get hurt right now. I share your perspective about keeping everything as free as possible, but I guess I'm less consistent than you in this case. I hope you will be available in the future when we find a solution with free textures and names.
@Liviu:
Sorry, I didn't get into how to work with the SVN yet. Can't you just overwrite everything with the most recent versions? The following links contain everything I contributed so far. (If you want to reduce the amount of work I suggest you just use the three zip files with the collected works in each category:
Textures
Without the new sprites many maps wouldn't work properly. Please ensure to add them correctly as well! (6 sky textures and 6 plant variations)
Events
Shortcut: All events in one zip for direct implementation into the "events" folder (not as plugins).
Single races
Shortcut: All maps in one zip for direct implementation into the "maps" folder (not as plugins).